Hello, I too am researching for our pioneering forefather William Thackwray born about 1779, most likely in Yorkshire region, married to Dorothy Pownall, I have learned more about the Pownall's origins in Salford & Chesire but the Thackwray origin still is elusive ?
So we have one Thackwray-Thackeray family tree in South Africa since 1820, wanting to find a DNA link to other family trees in Yorkshire & the world to solve this ?
- research history shows the variation in spellings of this surname has occurred often
eg:- Thackwray, Thackray, Thackway, Thackeray, Thackerray, Thackuray, Thackery, Thackerey, Thackary, Thackwraye, Thackrey, Thackory, Thacerey, Thakkerey, Thackara !!!
- in fact there are family trees with diffrerent spellings between father, son & siblings,
eg:- Read & look at this family tree example to see how quickly surnames can change within family trees :-
https://jon.thackray.org/family-tree/- this surname name originated in the North of England,
- most of us will have at least one Thack?
antecedent born in Yorkshire, England !
Today we are scattered in the USA, Canada, UK, Europe, Africa, Australia, New Zealand
and we have difficulty researching our ancestors before 1800 due to these spelling variations on old hand written documents ...
Today we can easily solve the mysteries of our surname by a Y-DNA surname project, and link family branches globally and possibly prove our links to the migration of the Vikings !